AS189: Paris and Beirut Attacks

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 189, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Okay, well, we're back to our regular, our new regular schedule, and it's good timing because, well I had a lot of stuff to talk about, but that has been preempted by the, of course, horrendous attack in Paris, and I suppose I should say the horrendous attack in Beirut, too, just to make sure we're covering all bases, similar death count, very eerie.

0:01:02 Thomas: Well, let's just go ahead and get right to the commentary, might as well make it official and play the music.

0:01:15 Thomas: I simply cannot believe that there are still, STILL, the kinds of reactions that there are, especially among Republicans like Trump and others who, prominent Republicans, talking about the fact that gun control, you know, well, if they could have had guns in the dark concert hall, you feel like in the Dark, loud, chaotic concert hall if everyone had guns, I'm sure it would have been great. It would have just been a paradise. You'd just instantly identify who the terrorists were in the dark, chaotic, loud concert hall, and then you just shoot them and then it would be fine. Everybody would be happy. I refuse to believe there are people who still take that idea seriously, but it seems as though there are. I thought I'd get right out of the gates with a freebie, you know, just a very easy response.

0:02:08 Thomas: So let's talk about it. I mean, obviously terrible. Obviously, what can you say? I mean I feel so awful. I would be curious if there's any of my listeners who live in Paris. Please let me know. Maybe we can get you on to talk about how it's affected you or what the climate is like and etc. That'd be really fascinating. I know I have a few French listeners. So yeah, just horrendous stuff. I mean, the scariest thing about this attack is that I don't know why this doesn't happen every day. It does not seem that hard to do. You know, that's the scariest things to me. It seems easy to do. And maybe, and I mean that's the issue. I think this is the constant thing going back and forth.

0:02:56 Thomas: We try, something horrible happens, and we all need to find patterns, you know? Some people, far-right people, who aren't gun nuts, I'll say, who gun control isn't their focus, they find it easy to just condemn all Muslims, and some people are even going so far as to say the refugee, letting in refugees is what's causing this, like that makes any sense. That is weird to me, that anyone could possibly think that letting in people who are trying to flee from this kind of violence somehow opens you up to people who're going to perpetrate that kind of... That strikes me... I mean, unless there's some evidence that the attackers were specifically refugees, it just seems unlikely to me.

0:03:46 Thomas: I don't know, maybe, I mean, maybe you could say that you need to screen people to make sure that people aren't slipping in under false pretenses or something, but that, that seems like pure xenophobia to me. That just seems like people who don't want to allow refugees in the country finding something to jump onto. And I read a good article on Slate that highlighted this fact. I mean, I don't really see people coming in on rafts all of a sudden radicalizing and attacking the country they accepted them. Now, I suppose, again, you'd have to make sure that people aren't coming in under false pretenses, but to have that reaction seems very strange to me. But what do we make of the fact that there was an attack in Beirut virtually, I guess, right before this one?

0:04:33 Thomas: Maybe a day before? It's unclear because of the time zones. I haven't quite sorted that out. But at any rate, very close to this one that received almost no attention. It's getting posted a lot on Facebook, and I can't help but think that this is maybe not the best way to go about it. I think that rather than take the tragedy that everybody has, everybody's attention and people are mourning over and trying to either minimize it or shift focus. If indeed you think that it's a problem that we didn't make enough of the Beirut attack, I think perhaps the better way to go about it would be to try to highlight that more when it happened. Don't you think? I mean, I can't help but feel like that's a little opportunistic. Like the fact that I didn't see these people, you know, friends of mine on Facebook and other other places.

0:05:24 Thomas: I'm sure you've seen the same post. The fact that I didn't see them posting about the Beirut attack to begin with, because it was out there, it was in the news somewhere. I mean, you can find it. But then later after the Paris attack, posting articles about how, oh, we should have paid more attention. Why weren't we mourning more for the Beirut attack? Well, I don't know. I think it may be true that we need to pay more attention to places we are just not used to paying attention to, especially when there's a body count like that. But I don't know if the correct way to go about it is to try to minimize or distract from when we're already mourning a tragedy that's happened. But, I was thinking a little about that. I just think there's a lot that goes into it.

0:06:11 Thomas: I mean, the easy, let's take the easy answer. You guys know me. I think there's always a range of answers. There's the easy left-wing answer, there's the the easy right-wing answer. And then there's kind of what I think tends to be more the truth, which is somewhere in the middle slash middle left. I'll just be honest with you guys. That's where things end up for me. Not everything goes that way, but I think the easy liberal answer is, well, we're just racist. We only care about things that happen to white people. We don't care about this news when it's anyone other than a race of white people, and I think there's a grain of truth to that. I think there's a little bit. I mean, we certainly, you remember with the Nigerian girls that were abducted, there certainly was a long period of no attention paid to it.

0:06:59 Thomas: And I think that's a problem. However, I don't know that it's so simple as just race, and I'll tell you why. Just think about the news closest to you. I just think as things radiate away from us, away from our spheres of experience, you know, think about the news that's in your, whatever, if you ever happen to watch your local news, the kind of stuff that's covered is just the most dull thing. I mean, no one would ever care outside of your town or maybe a city if you live in a city. It'll be traffic, it'll be minor collisions, it just the stuff closer to you, you focus on more to the point where you care about these very minor things. And then as you kind of radiate outward from where you are, at least this is, I think this is what happens for me, as you radiate outward, it takes much more of a headline to grab your attention.

0:07:54 Thomas: I mean, can you think of, do you know, you might know about murders that have taken place in your city or even your state, but I mean can you think, once you start to radiate outwards, do you know anything about murders that take place in, and this is just regular murder, not even like mass murders, but just just basic crimes. I mean, you don't know much about basic crimes that take place in another country, I would guess, unless, again, there's some sort of mass shooting element to it. So I think that's a part of it. And then I also think another part of is, I'll be honest, I'm probably ignorant. I just don't Know much about Beirut. I didn't see the headlines. I think we should have seen more coverage about it. I'm not saying we shouldn't have.

0:08:39 Thomas: I don't know a lot about the Beirut attack. But I think Twitter is a part of it. The reason the Paris attacks really affected me, and I'm sure they affected a lot of people, is that I just saw so many people tweeting. Some people were retweeting from someone who was inside the theater, the venue that was attacked, saying like, can the police... And I never verified if it was real. I'd have no reason to doubt it, but it was someone tweeting like they're executing people, please storm in, you know, calling on the police to please ambush. And just stuff like that, being able to witness it in real time. I don't know of any accounts like that for the Beirut attack, not saying they don't exist, but I think Twitter usage and social media usage, I think, is a big part of this.

0:09:29 Thomas: Like the more, I mean, things in the US, we have such a high level, high density of our citizens use some sort of social media. So anything that's going to happen, any shooting, any anything, terrorist attack, I mean, it's all going to unfold in real time. And that will always capture more attention. That is virtually, I think, unarguable. Now, it might be arguable how much, I don't know, maybe for the same racist reasons you could say, I, you know, I do not follow anyone in Beirut or something. That is possible. I think language is a big part of it and having that commonality that we're, you know, for me anyway, for the country that I'm in, in France, there's a lot of commonality there. And by that, I mean a lot French people know English, not really vice versa.

0:10:18 Thomas: So that's a part of it. But to get back to what I was saying, I mean, when you see something unfold live, it's always going to be more compelling than when you read a number. I mean when you get down to that, that high-level view of just 147 people dead somewhere. You know, I mean, that doesn't, it should, it, you know, really, it should affect us that same way. Humans are not perfect. We're incredibly flawed. We should be just as affected by reading two people died as like, you, know, seeing, you actually seeing two people die. Really, if we were perfectly calibrated machines of empathy, we should have the same reaction. But the truth is, we do not. I mean, and I think that's a big part of it. Now, again, some of that is part of the problem.

0:11:04 Thomas: Some of that maybe media coverage could have been done in a way that made that more clear, because I certainly didn't see that. And I follow the news a reasonable amount. I think I've said before, but I don't follow it through any one channel or anything. I follow Google News headlines. That's where I get my my news, and I think it's pretty decently worldly. I mean, I'll see headlines. There's a world section. I'll see headlines of what's going on in the world. I definitely am not saying I'm perfect and I'm going to search far and wide for everything happening in the word, but I don't rely on Fox News. I don't rely on CNN. I don't know anything about... I don't rely on any TV news. It's terrible. I think that's a terrible way to get your news, I think. And even that, I mean, even Google News, I really don't recall.

0:11:52 Thomas: Maybe I was busy that part of the day or something, but I just do not recall seeing the level of coverage. But I think social media is a huge part of it. I think that really is a big part of It.

And then finally, I would say that when you see the attack has happened in Paris, and when I say you, sorry, I'm speaking loosely in general, when someone like me, someone Someone who I'm talking about who maybe could be accused of undue attention toward attacks on other white people, but not enough attention toward the attack in Beirut. When I see this Paris attack, I can associate things with it. I can associated with the Eiffel Tower, the Charlie Hebdo also.

I mean, there's countless friends of mine posting their vacation pictures because they've actually been there. There. I don't know a lot of people personally who've been to Beirut. I really don't. I would imagine if they had, they would probably feel a more profound connection to if they could actually physically think of like where the attack took place. So I think there's a lot that goes into it.

And all this is to say, I do think we should pay more attention to, should have paid more attention to the attack in Beirut, but I think There are perfectly legitimate reasons why we we don't. I think I've covered them. Our sphere of attention kind of just diminishes as it gets further away from us, and not just physically further away, further away in culture too, and I think that'll be true of everybody. I don't know, but it's something we can work to fix. So that was something I saw a lot of people posting that I thought was maybe not the most useful thing.

0:13:33 Thomas: I, I think what we should do is in the future, and maybe this is how they meant it, in which case that's fine. In the future, we do need to pay more attention to this kind of thing when it happens anywhere in the world. But now I suppose I should get to the inevitable part where we talk about, is it all, are all Muslims terrorists? No, no one's saying all Muslims are terrorists. Well, how many are? Well, that, it's the inevitable back and forth. Someone will allege that someone else is saying all muslims are terrorists, that person is almost never actually saying that. I've never, I don't know of anyone who thinks that, but if anyone does think that, they're insane. How funny of a world would that be if 1.6 or 1.7 billion people were actually terrorists? You'd run out of people to terrorize, I think. That's far too many people.

0:14:23 Thomas: But there's always the same apologists. It's the same old thing. You get the Reza Aslan version, his reaction. It's always religion is nothing. It's an empty shell. It's an empty, just the words on a page mean nothing. It's all what everybody brings to it. And Well, I don't find that convincing because I think ideas matter and I think people's beliefs matter. I also, if you look at the statement by ISIS where they declared responsibility for the attacks, it's incredibly metaphysical. It's religious, you know? There's certainly a political aspect and this is the same stupid dance we have to do every time. Maybe it's not even worth it. Maybe I shouldn't even get into it. You all know where I stand.

0:15:09 Thomas: I think there are elements of politics. I think the elements of poverty are a little bit overstated because we have a hell of a lot of poverty in a lot places, but only in certain places does it seem to yield these attacks. And also so many of the suicide bombers, so many attackers don't come from poverty. They really don't. I don't think it's insanity either. Almost none of them that I know of, of these these terrorists have diagnosable mental disorders that at least, I mean, that are covered. It's possible it's something that nobody knows about, but I don't think that's it either. I mean it really seems to be, of course, there's a certain amount of political element to it and there's political gains that maybe they want to make or these organizations want to making, but for the most part it's important that they have a philosophy that involves life after death and involves being rewarded for martyrdom.

0:16:06 Thomas: That's a somewhat important thing. It's something that we ought to get rid of no matter what. And that's the thing that it always comes back to for me is, I don't know why we're even debating this. I don't know why there's even a question of, well, it doesn't matter. It's like anyone who believes X, Y, and Z, we really ought to try to convince otherwise. Anyone who believes in an afterlife, I think already that counts a lot, you know, almost every religion. Christians, Jews, well, actually Jewish, it's a little unclear, but Christians certainly, and anyone certainly, anyone who believes their God will reward you for killing somebody in the afterlife. Now, that is certainly a belief, even if they were never going to act on it. I mean, that's a belief that we ought to challenge no matter what.

0:16:52 Thomas: And of course, to go along with that, anyone who believes that women are second-class citizens anywhere in the world. Anyone who believes that, we have to challenge that belief. So when you really, it's weird that we formed this identity and this label and said like, no, not all Muslims. We got to disassociate Islam from terrorists. It's a totally different thing. I don't even know that we need to do that. I mean, can't we just look at these specific beliefs and say, whoever believes these things, we need to try to convince that it's not true. But I think the problem with that is that religion, because everybody's religious, I mean, because really, what is it? Worldwide, it's got to be 80, at least 80%, probably more. They give it a free pass. Once you label it Islam, once you label Christianity, as long as it's mainstream, you know, as Long as it is relatively mainstream, and that means different things for different religions, then it's kind of okay.

0:17:47 Thomas: They don't, there's no such thing as saying, okay, Islam is fine, but you can't believe this specific thing, or Christianity is fine, but you cannot believe this particular aspect of it. No one's really going to accept that, because they want their religion to have a free pass, and they want... religion is like a verbal currency, you know? What's your faith? What do you believe? Once you can identify as something, it really has quite a bit of currency, and so that's why it's weird that we... I think it's weird that we can't attack it on the level of ideas, and it has to be this constant thing of, well, are all Muslims, you know, do they all believe this or do they all not believe this? It's like, well some might, some might not. It seems to be that there's a slightly higher percentage in Islam who believe harmful things than there are in other religions.

0:18:37 Thomas: That's it. I mean, that's all I think. There's a, there probably, I would say probably significantly higher based on poll numbers that you find, but it's, admittedly, it's not entirely easy to find exact numbers on things like this. But that's all, it really is as simple as that. I don't know how you can just say it's all not, it's all political. It's all politics. They just want to get X, Y, and Z political aims achieved. And that's why they, but I mean, sure, they say it is religion. Sure, they are saying it is getting the infidel out of the land and punishing the infidels for this and that. But it is really this. And as Sam Harris has pointed out, it is never the other way around. No one ever, no one ever gives a political reason for something. And then someone says, well, wait, what's the religious reason behind it? What's the secret, you know, like actual religious reason?

0:19:25 Thomas: It only goes one way. And maybe there are some times where they just are using religion as a sort of a scapegoat for being able to accomplish certain political gains. But the fact that it's always explained away from religion and never explained toward religion is very fishy. Here is one of the weaker attempts that I actually retweeted because I just thought it was so weak. I mean, this is Piers Morgan. This is somebody whose name I know who had, I guess he doesn't have the show anymore, but he has some sort of a voice. He said, "These murderers aren't refugees." Well, so far so good. I totally agree with that. "Nor are they real Muslims." We could argue about that. "They're terrorists who have hijacked a religion for nefarious gain."

0:20:12 Thomas: Now, what does that mean? Mean? What in the world could that mean? They've hijacked. So, and again, he's talking about the terrorists that just committed suicide bombs, you know, like just blew themselves up. They're hijacking the rich. So what is that supposed to mean? There could just do the normal Islam. Like they could just be Muslim and let's just be happy and everything will be fine. Like, no, now we're not gaining enough from that. We need to hijack this religion in order to bend it toward a nefarious gain, which is blowing ourselves up. What could this mean? Am I missing something? Hijacking it for nefarous gain. Now, If you want to say maybe, I don't know, like, the terrorist leaders are brainwashing the terrorists, you know, like, getting them to perform terrorism and that's nefarious gain, maybe.

0:21:06 Thomas: I don't get the nefarious gain part of this. There's not a lot of, you know, nefarious gain in going and shooting a bunch of people and then blowing yourself up with a suicide vest. That doesn't... I don't get it. I mean, I mean, maybe we could blame this on Twitter, but I really think that's someone making a strong effort to get terrorism as far away from, Islamic fundamentalism, as far away from Islam as they can, and I think it's a rather weak attempt. There's also someone else I saw who thought that fundamentalists, they define fundamentalism, because there is the famous Sam Harris quote that was something like, the only problem with fundamentalist Islam is the fundamentals of Islam, or any religion.

0:21:52 Thomas: The only problem of fundamentalist anything is the fundamentalist, because as is always brought up, Jainism, other peaceful religions, if you have a religion that is literally just peace, it's very hard to be fundamentalist that. That. However, this person defined fundamentalist as hijacking the cause away so there's not even a true representation of the original religion. That was Qasim Rashid's version of fundamentalism. Is there anyone who disagrees with me on this? I'm curious. I view fundamentalism as simply Not ignoring the terrible parts of religious texts, because when we're talking about the major religions, they all have the just awful things in the text.

0:22:44 Thomas: They all do. The Bible has some of the worst. The Old Testament could be worse than the Quran. I've heard people say it is a lot worse than Quran. So, fundamentalism, to me, it actually, to me, it's being more that. It's being more Christian. It is being more Muslim. It's been closer to the original people who founded the religion. You know, it's acting more in accordance with them and with the people who carried out Old Testament law, you know. If you, if you want to be, now, the problem is it gets, there's so much history. In Christianity, there's so much history of, well, no, the Old Testament doesn't count. Jesus came and said a bunch of different stuff. And so that has pervaded most of the entire religion, because if you try to live by the Old testament, it's impossible.

0:23:34 Thomas: You just couldn't survive. You'd be locked up in minutes trying to live by The Old Testament. But that wasn't always the case. For a long time, people did live. It is somewhat a historical counting of how people lived back then. And And those people were closer to God. They were talking to God, and I don't know as much about Islamic history, but I do know that the people who are closest to the text are going to be the most violent, and the people who aren't taking the text and picking and choosing and finding ways for it to be more happy, which Christians do, which Muslims do, and it's a good thing they do, they're less fundamentalist. I don't see that, seriously, I used to, I had to unfollow Qasim Rashid.

0:24:22 Thomas: He was somebody under the Twitter profile or Twitter handle Muslim IQ. I wanted to have kind of a dissenting voice from what I was used to hearing. I have a lot of those that I follow because I want to make sure I'm informed on all sides of the arguments. And I think I needed to find someone else. I unfollowed him because what I realized is he's just a different kind of religious zealot. You can look him up. He's an Ahmadi Muslim. And his whole thing is that that's actually the true Islam. So, it took me a while to realize this, that when he says, no, these terrorists aren't real Muslims, what he means is they're not being Ahmadi Muslims, which is what, and it's weird because I thought he was just being an apologist in general, like, oh, these aren't true Muslims. They, they, you know, they're not following, and maybe, cause I've seen this, picking and choosing verses that sound peaceful out of the Quran saying they're not following these, but it's, it's really, he's an Ahmady zealot, essentially. He thinks that that's the truth. That's the true religion.

0:25:20 Thomas: And nevermind the fact that a lot of people don't share that belief. A lot of Muslims don't share that belief. It was weird to come to this realization. This is a bit of a tangent, something I've been meaning to talk about actually. The sort of difference between people who are looking at Islam as, or any religion, as something that possibly has some truth behind it, and that there could be a true version of it, and someone like me or other atheists who, there isn't really a true version of Islam, because of the fact that, or true version of Christianity or anything, because the fact of these books say too many conflicting things. There can't really be one true version. So, it would take a very, very direct and very short, I think, book or either very short or incredibly long to spell out an exact perfect version of a religion.

0:26:11 Thomas: There's way too much room for error, room for different interpretations and all that. So, what I was realizing with this Muslim IQ Twitter handle guy, Qasim Rashid, who I wanted to follow in order to get a different point of view, I was realizing when he was saying, oh, you bigots don't know anything about Muslims, this is true Islam, and then he would quote Ahmadi, the guy who, you know, obviously started that kind of strain of Islam, and that imam that most Muslims don't recognize to be legitimate, then that's not really, when he's saying like, that's true Islam. He's being just as, what, zealous, I guess. He's being just as fundamentalist, but for a different thing.

0:26:57 Thomas: And it was a bizarre realization to me because I thought he was just your standard run of the mill. Oh, no, Islam is not that bad. Here's why. But it's more like, no. You guys have the wrong version of Islam. My version, which happens to be a persecuted minority within Islam, that's the right version. And you need to judge all Islam based on that. And it's like, well, for atheists, we just stand back and say, well we can judge Islam by its adherence, you know? That's the, really, I mean, what more can you do? You can judge Christianity by its adherence. There are a lot of things that Christians do that I hate, a tremendous amount of things, blocking important legislation, abortion rights, women's rights, all kinds of things.

0:27:43 Thomas: However, they don't have as big of a violence and terrorism problem as Islam. And when you measure it truly just by the adherence, because there are so many horrible things in all these books, you can't really measure it by the books. You can try, but it's more how the culture has shifted along with the interpretation of the books, and that's the important thing. So, to get back to it, to say that someone has hijacked a religion like that, what does that mean? How do you hijack a religion, you know, when it is something where there's so much interpretation? They just have a different interpretation. This is the great problem. Nothing is keeping people in line with any one interpretation. Nothing forces you, even when you have something like the Catholic Church, where there is a pope, where that's supposedly supposed to keep everyone in line, even then they change their mind.

0:28:37 Thomas: They've gone back and forth on stuff. They've progressed. Fortunately, I mean, the Catholic Church has progressed a tremendous amount. There's nothing that keeps you from hijacking a religion. I mean that just doesn't really exist to me. So what you need to look at is the culture and the adherence of Islam and by and large what they believe. That's what you have to look out. It doesn't matter. Matter. I mean, if you can find a verse somewhere that says women are completely equal to men, which I think there is a verse that I often see people reference from the Quran that says something to that effect. People will say that all the time. People would throw that quote out there. No, Islam is not sexist. Here's this quote. Check this out. I don't care if that quote is 100% legitimate.

0:29:25 Thomas: It's 100% interpreted the right way. When you go and you poll Muslims on their attitude toward women and look at their laws and how they're running their societies, that gives you the better picture. That's Islam. I think, I mean, let me know if you guys disagree on that, but I think that's how you, that's the only way you can, you can... Because imagine, imagine a day, maybe in the future where the polls say that 100% of Muslims are pro-women's rights or pro-gay rights are totally cool. The polls come in just astronomically different. They're better than the rest of the world. They are better than any Western society. They have more advanced attitudes towards gays, towards minorities, just anything, any civil rights issue, and their laws reflect that.

0:30:15 Thomas: I mean, once that happens, what would it even mean to go back and look at the Quran and look at these bad verses and stuff and say like, oh yeah, this is a problem. Check this out. Would that even mean anything? I I don't really think it does. I think all that means something is how the adherents are actually interpreting the word or if they're just ignoring it, as the case may be. I think that's what really matters. And finally here, I wanted to talk about something still involved with this but slightly different, kind of a change of pace. I I was in the midst of reading this coverage, following it live on Friday. Honestly, I felt like I was going to cry for most of the day. I really did, because it was so easy to imagine it happening to me or somebody I knew, just being at some sort of music concert and just having people open fire.

0:31:07 Thomas: I was having a tough reaction to it, and I felt horrible for most of the day. Still do, of course, but it was certainly worse as it was happening. And then I saw someone retweet a Doug Stanhope tweet, and here's what it said. "No, sir, we sold this out. You can't take those 118 off our door sales. Who here speaks French?" Tour manager of Eagles of Death Metal, which was the band that was playing at the time. And it was interesting because I I think I experienced what a lot of people experience when something they take very seriously is being joked about. I saw that and I thought, that's not funny. I'm not laughing at that.

0:31:52 Thomas: I see the joke. It's that I kind of see it. They would want to still get paid because the venues always try to screw the acts. I think that's probably why Doug made that tweet. He has has experience with comedians of venues trying to screw over acts by not paying them all their money. And it's like, you know, I get the, I see it. I see the joke, but it just was not funny. It was not, to me, I was in no, it's still, honestly, to be honest, it was not a joke. It's not ever going to be funny. It wouldn't be funny if it was, you know, if I wasn't even in the midst of hearing that or news, it just, it is not really my kind of joke. I will put it that way. But I thought about it and I thought, you know, this is the very thing that I stand for. I really do. I stand for free speech and I stand for, I stand against the ridiculous backlash that we, that we just levy against people like this.

0:32:48 Thomas: And I, for one, I'm kind of, I tweeted about this too. I'm kind of glad that Doug Stanhope exists because for one he, I can tell you, he does not give a shit about people's reaction. I, and I think that's, I think you need those voices in society. Now, I didn't like this joke. Honestly, it made me a little mad. But I think that this is the kind of thing where I realized, like, yeah, this is horrible. I don't like it. But someone might find it funny. And it's up to him to tweet it if he wants. And there's no reason to call for his head, which I think a lot of people might. I mean, Doug, he's not that big. But could you imagine any other bigger comedian? Could you imagine a comedian with more sway making this tweet?

People would be calling for his head. They would say he needs to lose job X, Y, or Z. Fire that guy from, I don't know, whatever it is, Last Comic Standing, whatever, I do not know, television show. Cancel that guy's show if he tweeted that. That kind of thing. It is weird that we have to take that step.

0:33:55 Thomas: I think what I tried to do when I saw that was I tried to put my money where my mouth is because I firmly believe that we should not try to get people fired for mere words. We should see if we could convince them otherwise. It depends on what, I mean, even if it's something racist or something horrible like that, I still think we shouldn't attempt to get them fired. I still think the better approach would be try to convince them that they're wrong. And then if they apologize and say they were wrong, accept their apology, if it seems sincere, that's what I think is the better course of action. It gets a little fuzzier if you're starting to talk about, you know, some sort of extreme racist views that would affect whatever job they're doing. But when it comes to a joke, something that could legitimately be called a joke.

0:34:41 Thomas: Something that any rational person would say he was trying to make a joke, I simply don't think we should try to get people fired for that. I really don't. From whatever it is. Whatever it is, if it's comedian, personality, you know, celebrity, whatever it it is. Or if it's just a, I don't know, some administrator somewhere. I don't think that's the appropriate response. And in this case, I don't think there is any. If you wanted to, you could tweet Doug Stanhope and say, "Hey, that was insensitive. There's people who died. This is just, you shouldn't be." And he'll probably say, "I don't care." He will either not see it or say, you know, "F you. I don't care." And I think those people are important. And it's almost good, good that he has nobody, no employer. Doug Stanhope, I don't know if you're not familiar, he talks about the fact that he lives somewhere in, I dunno, like Arizona or something.

0:35:32 Thomas: He has no nut, by that he means just, just no payments he has to make. He, he bought his house outright or something, he has no ongoing payments. He's not beholden to anyone. So he can say whatever he wants. And I think that's, I think, that's important in our society. And in this case, I found this not funny. I found This Joke, you could even say tasteless. I could almost say in some ways I was somewhat offended when I saw it. You know, I was really, really not feeling good. And I saw about these poor people who died and I see this tweet and I didn't like it. I didn't laugh, but who cares? Who cares? We can handle it. I think that people need to be adults and say, I didn't like this. That's my problem. Who cares?

0:36:19 Thomas: Really? I mean, it's as simple as that. Unfollow if you want. By the way, I didn't even follow him. I saw someone retweet him, but I'm probably going to follow him now. But it's simple as that. It really is. It's your choice. If someone is just up in your face yelling something at you, that's infringing on your rights. If somebody is merely tweeting a joke that they're making, or an opinion, I mean it's up to you to just not listen to it or not care. I mean I think it's it's as simple as that. So, once again, I'm curious on your feedback. I had a whole host of things I wanted to talk about that weren't this, so that's unfortunate, but I'll push them to another time. I have a great guest on Thursday still. Still gonna, I're not gonna do more on this. I think there's, everybody's, you've heard all I think over and over with these terrorist attacks.

0:37:09 Thomas: It doesn't, nothing new really happens. It's all the same back and forth of, you know, know, is Islam to blame? Is it not to blame?" It's always the same. So I'm still gonna play my amazing interview that I had on Thursday. I'm excited about it. And then next week, I should have an interview with James Lindsay on his new book. And I wanted to mention this because this is what happens. Someone releases a book, they do a billion interviews because they're trying to promote the book. I tried to get one of the first ones. It looks like someone beat me out. I might be one one of the first, but I'm not going to have the first interview. But I am reading his entire book. I'm going to really get in depth with James Lindsay on his book. And I think it'll be interesting. I will definitely make an attempt. I'm making my biggest attempt that I can to have it be different, have it be more in depth.

0:37:58 Thomas: And that's what it'll have to be. And if you see him show up on every podcast after or before mine, apologies, but that's kind of how the, how it it goes. Um, but I can only promise that I'll try to do it better, try to do it more in depth and, uh, we'll see how it goes, so just wanted to mention that. That'll likely be next week's episodes because there's a lot to talk about. We'll see what happens next week.

We'll talk about how it does, though I haven't actually had the interview yet. All All right, as usual, I would love to hear your feedback. I'd love to hear what you think. I would like to hear from anyone who's actually in Paris or France, how it's gone there, what the feel is there. It's very fascinating to actually talk to someone who's there. That would be great. So be sure to contact me, atheisticallyspeakingatgmail.com or any Facebook, Twitter, anything you want. And yeah, let me know your comments as usual. I've really enjoyed them. I'm curious what you think about what I've said, and I like this format for that reason. So with that being said, support me on patreon.com/atheist if you would care to. And with that, I will see you on Thursday.